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In what sense is the Sumerian culture characterized. Habitat and features of the Sumerian culture

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Introduction

culture Sumerian temple

Even in the IV millennium BC. e. in the southern part of Mesopotamia on the territory of modern Iraq, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a high culture of the Sumerians was formed at that time (the self-name of the Saggig people is blackheads), which was then inherited by the Babylonians and Assyrians. At the turn of III-II millennia BC. e. Sumer is in decline, and over time, the Sumerian language was forgotten by the population; only the Babylonian priests knew it, it was the language of sacred texts. At the beginning of the II millennium BC. e. primacy in Mesopotamia passes to Babylon.

In the south of Mesopotamia, where it was widely held Agriculture, the ancient city-states of Ur, Uruk, Kish, Umma, Lagash, Nippur, Akkad developed. The youngest of these cities was Babylon, built on the banks of the Euphrates. Most of the cities were founded by the Sumerians, so the ancient culture of Mesopotamia is usually called Sumerian. Now they are called "progenitor modern civilization"The heyday of the city-states is called the golden age of the ancient state of the Sumerians. This is true both in the literal and figurative sense of the word: objects of the most diverse household purposes and weapons were made from gold here. The culture of the Sumerians had a great influence on the subsequent progress not only of Mesopotamia, but also of all mankind.

This culture was ahead of the development of other great cultures. Nomads and trade caravans spread the news about her everywhere.

1 . Writing

The cultural contribution of the Sumerians was not limited to the discovery of methods for working metals, the manufacture of wheeled carts and the potter's wheel. They became the inventors of the first form of recording human speech. At the first stage, it was pictography (pictorial writing), that is, a letter consisting of drawings and, less often, symbols denoting one word or concept. The combination of these drawings conveyed certain information in writing. However, Sumerian legends say that even before the emergence of picture writing, there existed an even more ancient way of fixing thoughts - tying knots on a rope and notches on trees. At the subsequent stages, the drawings were stylized (from a complete, fairly detailed and thorough depiction of objects, the Sumerians gradually move to their incomplete, schematic or symbolic depiction), which accelerated the process of writing. This is a step forward, but the possibilities of such writing were still limited. Thanks to simplifications, individual characters could be used multiple times. So, for many complex concepts, there were no signs at all, and even in order to designate such a familiar phenomenon as rain, the scribe had to combine the symbol of the sky - a star and the symbol of water - ripples. Such a letter is called ideographic-rebus.

Historians believe that it was the formation of the management system that led to the appearance of writing in temples and royal palaces. This ingenious invention should, apparently, be considered the merit of the Sumerian temple officials, who improved the pictography to simplify the registration of economic events and trade transactions. Records were made on clay tiles or tablets: soft clay was pressed with the corner of a rectangular stick, and the lines on the tablets had characteristic appearance wedge-shaped recesses. In general, the entire inscription was a mass of wedge-shaped lines, and therefore Sumerian writing is usually called cuneiform. The oldest cuneiform tablets, which made up entire archives, contain information about the temple economy: lease agreements, documents on control over work performed and registration of incoming goods. These are the oldest written records in the world.

Subsequently, the principle of pictorial writing began to be replaced by the principle of conveying the sound side of the word. Hundreds of characters for syllables appeared, and several alphabetic characters corresponding to the main letters. They were mainly used to refer to service words and particles. Writing was a great achievement of the Sumero-Akkadian culture. It was borrowed and developed by the Babylonians and spread widely throughout Asia Minor: cuneiform was used in Syria, ancient Persia, and other states. In the middle of the II millennium BC. e. Cuneiform became the international writing system: even the Egyptian pharaohs knew and used it. In the middle of the first millennium BC. e. cuneiform becomes alphabetic.

2 . Language

For a long time, scientists believed that the Sumerian language was not similar to any of the living and dead languages \u200b\u200bknown to mankind, so the question of the origin of this people remained a mystery. To date, the genetic links of the Sumerian language have not yet been established, but most scientists suggest that this language, like the language of the ancient Egyptians and the inhabitants of Akkad, belongs to the Semitic-Hamitic language group.

Around 2000 BC, the Sumerian language was supplanted by the Akkadian language from the spoken language, but continued to be used as a sacred, liturgical and scientific language until the beginning of AD. e.

3 . cultureAndreligion

In ancient Sumer, the origins of religion had purely materialistic, and not "ethical" roots. Early Sumerian deities 4-3 thousand BC acted primarily as givers of life's blessings and abundance. The purpose of the cult of the gods was not "purification and holiness", but was intended to ensure a good harvest, military success, etc. - it was for this that ordinary mortals revered them, built temples for them, made sacrifices. The Sumerians claimed that everything in the world belongs to the gods - the temples were not the place of residence of the gods, who were obliged to take care of people, but the granaries of the gods - barns. Most of the early Sumerian deities were formed by local gods, whose power did not go beyond a very small territory. The second group of gods were the patrons of large cities - they were more powerful than the local gods, but they were revered only in their cities. Finally, the gods who were known and worshiped in all Sumerian cities.

In Sumer, the gods were like people. In their relationship there are matchmaking and wars, anger and revenge, deceit and anger. Quarrels and intrigues were common in the circle of the gods, the gods knew love and hate. Like people, they did business during the day - they decided the fate of the world, and at night they retired to rest.

Sumerian hell - Kur - a gloomy dark underworld, on the way where there were three servants - "door man", "underground river man", "carrier". Reminds the ancient Greek Hades and Sheol of the ancient Jews. There, a man passed through the court, and a gloomy, depressing existence awaited him. A person comes into this world for a short time, and then disappears into the dark mouth of the Kur. In Sumerian culture, for the first time in history, a person made an attempt to morally overcome death, to understand it as a moment of transition to eternity. All the thoughts of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia were directed to the living: they wished the living well-being and health every day, the multiplication of the family and a happy marriage for daughters, a successful career for sons, and that “beer, wine and all good things never run dry” in the house. The posthumous fate of a person was of less interest to them and seemed to them rather sad and uncertain: the food of the dead is dust and clay, they "do not see the light" and "live in darkness."

In Sumerian mythology, there are also myths about the golden age of mankind and paradise life, which eventually became part of the religious ideas of the peoples of Asia Minor, and later - in biblical stories.

The only thing that can brighten up the existence of a person in a dungeon is the memory of the living on earth. The people of Mesopotamia were brought up in the deep conviction that one should leave a memory of oneself on earth. Memory is preserved for the longest time in erected cultural monuments. It was they, created by the hands, thought and spirit of man, that constituted the spiritual values of this people, this country and really left behind a powerful historical memory. In general, the views of the Sumerians were reflected in many later religions.

Table. The most powerful gods

An (in Akkadian transcription of Anna)	The god of heaven and the father of other gods, who, like people, asked him for help if necessary. Known for his dismissive attitude towards them and evil antics. Patron of the city of Uruk.
	The god of the wind, air and all space from earth to sky, also treated people and lower deities with disdain, but he invented a hoe and presented it to humanity and was revered as the patron of the earth and fertility. His main temple was in the city of Nippur.
Enki (in Akkadian tran. Ea)	The protector of the city of Eredu, was recognized as the god of the ocean and fresh underground waters.

Table. Other important deities

Nanna (akkad. Sin)	Moon god, patron of the city of Ur
Utu (Akkadian Shamash)	Son of Nanna, patron of the cities of Sippar and Larsa. He personified the ruthless power of the withers. solar heat and at the same time solar heat, without which life is impossible.
Inanna (akkad. Ishtar)	Goddess of fertility and carnal love, she bestowed military victories. Goddess of the city of Uruk.
Dumuzi (Akkadian Tammuz)	The husband of Inanna, the son of the god Enki, the god of water and vegetation, who annually died and resurrected.
	Lord of the realm of the dead and god of the plague.
	Patron saint of valiant warriors. The son of Enlil, who had no city of his own.
Ishkur (Akkadian Adad)	God of thunder and storms.

The goddesses of the Sumerian-Akkadian pantheon usually acted as the wives of powerful gods or as deities personifying death and the underworld.

In the Sumerian religion, the most important gods, in whose honor the ziggurats were built, were represented in human form as the rulers of the sky, sun, earth, water and storm. In each city, the Sumerians worshiped their own god.

Priests acted as an intermediary between people and gods. With the help of divination, spells and magic formulas, they tried to comprehend the will of the celestials and convey it to the common people.

During 3 thousand BC. the attitude towards the gods gradually changed: they began to attribute new qualities.

The strengthening of statehood in Mesopotamia was also reflected in the religious ideas of the inhabitants. The deities, who personified cosmic and natural forces, began to be perceived as great "heavenly chiefs" and only then as the natural element and "giver of blessings." In the pantheon of the gods, the god-secretary, the god-bearer of the throne of the lord, the gatekeeper gods appeared. Important deities have been assigned to various planets and constellations:

Utu is with the Sun, Nergal is with Mars, Inanna is with Venus. Therefore, all the townspeople were interested in the position of the luminaries in the sky, their relative position and especially the place of “their” star: this promised inevitable changes in the life of the city-state and its population, whether it be prosperity or misfortune. Thus, the cult of heavenly bodies gradually formed, astronomical thought and astrology began to develop. Astrology was born among the first civilization of mankind - Sumerian civilization. It was about 6 thousand years ago. At first, the Sumerians deified the 7 planets closest to the Earth. Their influence on the Earth was considered as the will of the Deity living on this planet. The Sumerians first noticed that changes in the position of celestial bodies in the sky cause changes in earthly life. Observing the constantly changing dynamics of the starry sky, the Sumerian priests constantly studied and investigated the influence of the movement of celestial bodies on earthly life. That is, they correlated earthly life with the movement of heavenly bodies. There in heaven one could feel order, harmony, consistency, legality. They made the following logical conclusion: if earthly life is consistent with the will of the Gods living on the planets, then a similar order and harmony will arise on Earth. Predictions of the future were built on the basis of studying the position of stars and constellations in the sky, the flights of birds, and the entrails of animals sacrificed to the gods. People believed in the predestination of human destiny, in the subordination of man to higher powers; believed that supernatural forces are always invisibly present in the real world and manifest themselves in a mysterious way.

4 . ArchitectureAndconstruction

The Sumerians knew how to build multi-story houses and wonderful temples.

Sumer was a country of city-states. The largest of them had their own ruler, who was also the high priest. The cities themselves were built up without any plan and were surrounded by an outer wall that reached considerable thickness. Residential houses of the townspeople were rectangular, two-story with an obligatory courtyard, sometimes with hanging gardens. Many houses had sewerage.

The center of the city was a temple complex. It included the temple of the main god - the patron of the city, the palace of the king and the temple estate.

The palaces of the rulers of Sumer combined a secular building and a fortress. The palace was surrounded by a wall. To supply water to the palaces, aqueducts were built - water was supplied through pipes hermetically insulated with bitumen and stone. The facades of the majestic palaces were decorated with bright reliefs depicting, as a rule, hunting scenes, historical battles with the enemy, as well as animals most revered for their strength and power.

Early temples were small rectangular buildings on a low platform. As cities grew rich and prospered, temples became more imposing and majestic. New temples were usually erected on the site of the old ones. Therefore, the platforms of the temples increased in volume over time; a certain type of structure arose - a ziggurat (see Fig.) - a three- and seven-step pyramid with a small temple at the top. All steps were painted in different colors - black, white, red, blue. The erection of the temple on a platform protected it from floods and flooding of rivers. A wide staircase led to the upper tower, sometimes several stairs from different sides. The tower could be crowned with a golden dome, and its walls were laid out with glazed bricks.

The lower powerful walls were alternating ledges and ledges, which created a play of light and shadow and visually increased the volume of the building. In the sanctuary - the main room of the temple complex - there was a statue of a deity - the heavenly patron of the city. Only priests could enter here, and access to the people was strictly prohibited. Small windows were located under the ceiling, and mother-of-pearl friezes and a mosaic of red, black and white clay nails driven into brick walls served as the main decoration of the interior. Trees and shrubs were planted on stepped terraces.

The most famous ziggurat in history is the temple of the god Marduk in Babylon - the famous Tower of Babel, the construction of which is mentioned in the Bible.

Wealthy citizens lived in two-story houses with a very complex interior. The bedrooms were located on the second floor, downstairs there were lounges and a kitchen. All windows and doors opened onto the inner courtyard, and only blank walls went out onto the street.

In the architecture of Mesopotamia, columns have been found since ancient times, which, however, did not play big role, as well as vaults. Quite early, the technique of dismembering walls by ledges and niches, as well as ornamenting walls with friezes made in mosaic technique, appears.

The Sumerians first encountered the arch. This design was invented in Mesopotamia. There was no forest here, and the builders thought of arranging an arched or vaulted ceiling instead of a beam ceiling. Arches and vaults were also used in Egypt (this is not surprising, since Egypt and Mesopotamia had contacts), but in Mesopotamia they originated earlier, were used more often and from there spread throughout the world.

The Sumerians established the length of the solar year, which allowed them to accurately orient their buildings to the four cardinal directions.

Mesopotamia was poor in stone, and raw brick, dried in the sun, served as the main building material there. Time has not been kind to brick buildings. In addition, cities were often subjected to enemy invasions, during which dwellings were destroyed to the ground. ordinary people, palaces and temples.

5 . Hauk

The Sumerians created astrology, substantiated the influence of stars on the fate of people and their health. Medicine was mostly homeopathic. Numerous clay tablets with recipes and magic formulas against the demons of disease have been found.

Priests and magicians used knowledge about the movement of the stars, the Moon, the Sun, about the behavior of animals for divination, foreseeing events in the state. The Sumerians were able to predict solar and lunar eclipses, created a solar-lunar calendar.

They discovered the belt of the Zodiac - 12 constellations that form a large circle along which the Sun makes its way during the year. The learned priests compiled calendars, calculated the timing of lunar eclipses. One of the oldest sciences, astronomy, was founded in Sumer.

In mathematics, the Sumerians knew how to count in tens. But the numbers 12 (a dozen) and 60 (five dozen) were especially revered. We still use the legacy of the Sumerians when we divide an hour into 60 minutes, a minute into 60 seconds, a year into 12 months, and a circle into 360 degrees.

The earliest mathematical texts that have come down to us, written by the Sumerians in the 22nd century BC, show high computational art. They contain multiplication tables in which the well-developed sexagesimal system is combined with the earlier decimal system. A penchant for mysticism was found in the fact that numbers were divided into lucky and unlucky - even the invented sixty-digit system of numbers was a relic of magical ideas: the number six was considered lucky. The Sumerians created a positional notation system in which a number would take on a different meaning depending on the place it occupies in a multi-digit number.

The first schools were created in the cities of Ancient Sumer. Rich Sumerians sent their sons there. Classes continued throughout the day. Learning to write in cuneiform, to count, to tell stories about gods and heroes was not easy. Boys were subjected to corporal punishment for not doing their homework. Anyone who successfully completed school could get a job as a scribe, official, or become a priest. This made it possible to live without knowing poverty.

A person was considered educated: fully fluent in writing, able to sing, owning musical instruments, able to make reasonable and legal decisions.

6. Literature

Their cultural achievements are great and indisputable: the Sumerians created the first poem in human history - "Golden Age", wrote the first elegies, compiled the world's first library catalog. The Sumerians are the authors of the first and oldest in the world medical books- collections of recipes. They were the first to develop and record the farmer's calendar and left the first information about protective plantings.

It has come to us big number monuments of Sumerian literature, mainly in copies rewritten after the fall III dynasty Ur and kept in the temple library in the city of Nippur. Unfortunately, partly due to the difficulty of the Sumerian literary language, partly due to the poor condition of the texts (some tablets were found broken into dozens of pieces, now stored in museums in various countries), these works have only recently been read.

Most of them are religious hymns to the gods, prayers, myths, legends about the origin of the world, human civilization and agriculture. In addition, temples have long kept lists royal dynasties. The most ancient are the lists written in the Sumerian language by the priests of the city of Ur. Of particular interest are several small poems containing legends about the origin of agriculture and civilization, the creation of which is attributed to the gods. These poems also raise the question of the comparative value for humans of agriculture and pastoralism, which probably reflects the relatively recent transition of the Sumerian tribes to an agricultural way of life.

The myth of the goddess Inanna, imprisoned in the underworld kingdom of death and freed from there, is distinguished by extremely archaic features; together with its return to earth, the life that was frozen returns. This myth reflected the change of the growing season and the "dead" period in the life of nature.

There were also hymns addressed to various deities, historical poems (for example, a poem about the victory of the Uruk king over the Guteis). The largest work of Sumerian religious literature is a poem written in deliberately intricate language about the construction of the temple of the god Ningirsu by the ruler of Lagash, Gudea. This poem was written on two clay cylinders, each about a meter high. A number of poems of a moral and instructive nature have been preserved.

Few literary monuments of folk art have come down to us. Those died for us folk art like fairy tales. Only a few fables and proverbs survive.

The most important monument of Sumerian literature is the cycle of epic tales about the hero Gilgamesh, the legendary king of the city of Uruk, who, as follows from the dynastic lists, ruled in the 28th century BC. In these tales, the hero Gilgamesh is presented as the son of a mere mortal and the goddess Ninsun. Gilgamesh's wanderings around the world in search of the secret of immortality and his friendship with the wild man Enkidu are described in detail. The most complete text of the great epic poem about Gilgamesh has been preserved written down in the Akkadian language. But the records of primary individual epics about Gilgamesh that have come down to us irrefutably testify to Sumerian origin epic.

The cycle of tales about Gilgamesh had a great influence on the surrounding peoples. It was adopted by the Akkadian Semites, and from them it spread to Northern Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. There were also cycles of epic songs dedicated to various other heroes.

An important place in the literature and worldview of the Sumerians was occupied by the legends of the flood, by which the gods allegedly destroyed all life, and only the pious hero Ziusudra was saved in the ship built on the advice of the god Enki. Flood legends, which served as the basis for the corresponding biblical legend, took shape under the undoubted influence of memories of catastrophic floods, which in the 4th millennium BC. e. many Sumerian settlements were destroyed more than once.

7 . Art

A special place in the Sumerian cultural heritage belongs to glyptics - carving on precious or semi-precious stone. Numerous Sumerian cylinder-shaped carved seals have survived. The seal was rolled over a clay surface and an impression was obtained - a miniature relief with a large number of characters and a clear, carefully built composition. For the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, the seal was not just a sign of ownership, but an object that had magic power. The seals were kept as talismans, given to temples, placed in burial places. In Sumerian engravings, the most frequent motifs were ritual feasts with figures sitting down to eat and drink. Other motifs were the legendary heroes Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu fighting monsters, as well as anthropomorphic figures of a bull-man. Over time, this style gave way to a continuous frieze depicting fighting animals, plants or flowers.

There was no monumental sculpture in Sumer. Small cult figurines are more common. They depict people in a pose of prayer. All sculptures have emphasized large eyes, as they were supposed to resemble an all-seeing eye. Big ears emphasized and symbolized wisdom, it is no coincidence that “wisdom” and “ear” in the Sumerian language are denoted by one word.

The art of Sumer has found development in numerous bas-reliefs, the main theme is the theme of hunting and battles. The faces in them were depicted in front, and the eyes - in profile, the shoulders in a three-quarter turn, and the legs - in profile. The proportions of human figures were not respected. But in the compositions of the bas-reliefs, the artists sought to convey movement.

Musical art certainly found its development in Sumer. For more than three millennia, the Sumerians composed their spell-songs, legends, laments, wedding songs, etc. The first stringed musical instruments - the lyre and the harp - also appeared among the Sumerians. They also had double oboes, big drums.

8 . EndSumer

After one and a half thousand years, the Sumerian culture was replaced by Akkadian. At the beginning of the II millennium BC. e. hordes of Semitic tribes invaded Mesopotamia. The conquerors adopted a higher local culture, but did not abandon their own. Moreover, they turned the Akkadian language into the official state language, and left the role of the language of religious worship and science to the Sumerian. The ethnic type also gradually disappears: the Sumerians dissolve into more numerous Semitic tribes. Their cultural conquests were continued by their successors: the Akkadians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the Chaldeans. After the emergence of the Akkadian Semitic kingdom, religious ideas also changed: there was a mixture of Semitic and Sumerian deities. Literary texts and school exercises, preserved on clay tablets, testify to the increasing level of literacy of the inhabitants of Akkad. During the reign of the dynasty from Akkad (about 2300 BC), the rigor and sketchiness of the Sumerian style give way to greater freedom of composition, voluminous figures and portraiture of features, primarily in sculpture and reliefs. In a single cultural complex called the Sumero-Akkadian culture, the Sumerians played the leading role. It is they, according to modern Orientalists, who are the founders of the famous Babylonian culture.

Two and a half thousand years have passed since the decline of the culture of Ancient Mesopotamia, and until recently it was known only from the stories of ancient Greek writers and from biblical traditions. But in the last century, archaeological excavations uncovered monuments of the material and written culture of Sumer, Assyria and Babylon, and this era appeared before us in all its barbaric splendor and gloomy grandeur.

In the spiritual culture of the Sumerians, there is still a lot of unsolved.

Csqueakusedliterature

1. Kravchenko A. I. Culturology: Uch. allowance for universities. -- M.: Academic project, 2001.

2.Emelyanov VV Ancient Sumer: Essays on culture. SPb., 2001

3. History of the Ancient World Ukolova V.I., Marinovich L.P. (Online edition)

4. Culturology edited by Professor A. N. Markova, Moscow, 2000, Unity

5. Culturology History of world culture, edited by N. O. Voskresenskaya, Moscow, 2003, Unity

6. History of world culture, E.P. Borzova, St. Petersburg, 2001

7. Culturology history of world culture edited by Professor A.N. Markova, Moscow, 1998, Unity

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Culture of Sumer

The basis of the economy of Sumer was agriculture with a developed irrigation system. Hence it is clear why one of the main monuments of Sumerian literature was the "Agricultural Almanac", containing instructions on farming - how to maintain soil fertility and avoid salinization. It was also important cattle breeding. metallurgy. Already at the beginning of the III millennium BC. the Sumerians began to manufacture bronze tools, and at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. entered the Iron Age. From the middle of the III millennium BC. potter's wheel is used in the production of dishes. Other crafts are successfully developing - weaving, stone-cutting, blacksmithing. Extensive trade and exchange takes place both between the Sumerian cities and with other countries - Egypt, Iran. India, the states of Asia Minor.

It should be emphasized the importance Sumerian writing. The cuneiform script invented by the Sumerians turned out to be the most successful and effective. Improved in the II millennium BC. Phoenicians, it formed the basis of almost all modern alphabets.

System religious and mythological ideas and cults Sumer partly echoes the Egyptian. In particular, it also contains the myth of a dying and resurrecting god, which is the god Dumuzi. As in Egypt, the ruler of the city-state was declared a descendant of a god and was perceived as an earthly god. At the same time, there were notable differences between the Sumerian and Egyptian systems. So, among the Sumerians, the funeral cult, belief in the afterlife did not acquire great importance. Equally, the priests among the Sumerians did not become a special layer that played a huge role in public life. In general, the Sumerian system religious beliefs seems less complicated.

As a rule, each city-state had its own patron god. However, there were gods who were revered throughout Mesopotamia. Behind them stood those forces of nature, the significance of which for agriculture was especially great - sky, earth and water. These were the sky god An, the earth god Enlil and the water god Enki. Some gods were associated with individual stars or constellations. It is noteworthy that in Sumerian writing, the pictogram of a star meant the concept of "god". Great importance in the Sumerian religion had a mother goddess, the patroness of agriculture, fertility and childbearing. There were several such goddesses, one of them was the goddess Inanna. patroness of the city of Uruk. Some myths of the Sumerians - about the creation of the world, the Flood - had a strong influence on the mythology of other peoples, including Christian ones.

In Sumer, the leading art was architecture. Unlike the Egyptians, the Sumerians did not know stone construction and all structures were created from raw brick. Due to the swampy terrain, buildings were erected on artificial platforms - embankments. From the middle of the III millennium BC. The Sumerians were the first to widely use arches and vaults in construction.

The first architectural monuments were two temples, White and Red, discovered in Uruk (end of the 4th millennium BC) and dedicated to the main deities of the city - the god Anu and the goddess Inanna. Both temples are rectangular in plan, with ledges and niches, decorated with relief images in the "Egyptian style". Another significant monument is the small temple of the goddess of fertility Ninhursag in Ur (XXVI century BC). It was built using the same architectural forms, but decorated not only with relief but also with round sculpture. In the niches of the walls there were copper figurines of walking gobies, and on the friezes there were high reliefs of lying gobies. At the entrance to the temple there are two statues of lions made of wood. All this made the temple festive and elegant.

In Sumer, a peculiar type of cult building developed - a ziggurag, which was a stepped, rectangular in plan tower. On the upper platform of the ziggurat there was usually a small temple - "the dwelling of the god." The ziggurat for thousands of years played approximately the same role as the Egyptian pyramid, but unlike the latter, it was not an afterlife temple. The most famous was the ziggurat (“temple-mountain”) in Ur (XXII-XXI centuries BC), which was part of a complex of two large temples and a palace and had three platforms: black, red and white. Only the lower, black platform has survived, but even in this form, the ziggurat makes a grandiose impression.

Sculpture in Sumer was less developed than architecture. As a rule, it had a cult, "initiatory" character: the believer placed a figurine made to his order, most often small in size, in the temple, which, as it were, was praying for his fate. The person was depicted conditionally, schematically and abstractly. without respect for proportions and without a portrait resemblance to the model, often in the pose of a prayer. An example is a female figurine (26 cm) from Lagash, which has mostly common ethnic features.

In the Akkadian period, sculpture changes significantly: it becomes more realistic, acquires individual features. The most famous masterpiece of this period is the copper head of Sargon the Ancient (XXIII century BC), which perfectly conveys the unique traits of the king's character: courage, will, severity. This work, rare in expressiveness, is almost indistinguishable from modern ones.

Sumerian reached a high level literature. In addition to the above-mentioned "Agricultural Almanac", the most significant literary monument was the Epic of Gilgamesh. This epic poem tells about a man who saw everything, experienced everything, knew everything and who was close to unraveling the mystery of immortality.

By the end of the III millennium BC. Sumer gradually declines and is eventually conquered by Babylonia.

Babylonia

Its history is divided into two periods: the Ancient, covering the first half of the 2nd millennium BC, and the New, falling in the middle of the 1st millennium BC.

Ancient Babylonia reaches its highest rise under the king Hammurabi(1792-1750 BC). Two significant monuments remain from his time. The first one is Laws of Hammurabi became the most outstanding monument of ancient Eastern legal thought. 282 articles of the Code of Law cover almost all aspects of the life of Babylonian society and constitute civil, criminal and administrative law. The second monument is a basalt pillar (2 m), which depicts King Hammurabi himself, sitting in front of Shamash, the god of the sun and justice, as well as a part of the text of the famous codex.

New Babylonia reached its highest peak under the king Nebuchadnezzar(605-562 BC). Under him were built famous "Hanging Gardens of Babylon", become one of the seven wonders of the world. They can be called a grandiose monument of love, since they were presented by the king to his beloved wife in order to alleviate her longing for the mountains and gardens of her homeland.

No less famous monument is also Tower of Babel. It was the highest ziggurat in Mesopotamia (90 m), consisting of several towers stacked on top of each other, on the top of which was the saint and she of Marduk, the main god of the Babylonians. Seeing the tower, Herodotus was shocked by its greatness. She is mentioned in the Bible. When the Persians conquered Babylonia (VI century BC), they destroyed Babylon and all the monuments that were in it.

The achievements of Babylonia deserve special mention. gastronomy And mathematics. The Babylonian stargazers calculated with amazing accuracy the time of the Moon's revolution around the Earth, compiled a solar calendar and a map of the starry sky. The names of the five planets and twelve constellations of the solar system are of Babylonian origin. Astrologers gave people astrology and horoscopes. Even more impressive were the successes of mathematicians. They laid the foundations of arithmetic and geometry, developed a “positional system”, where the numerical value of a sign depends on its “position”, knew how to square a power and extract a square root, created geometric formulas for measuring land.

Assyria

The third powerful power of Mesopotamia - Assyria - arose in the 3rd millennium BC, but reached its peak in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. Assyria was resource poor, but rose to prominence through its geographic location. She found herself at the crossroads of caravan routes, and trade made her rich and great. The capitals of Assyria were successively Ashur, Calah and Nineveh. By the XIII century. BC. it became the most powerful empire in the entire Middle East.

In the artistic culture of Assyria - as in the whole Mesopotamia - the leading art was architecture. The most significant architectural monuments are palace complex King Sargon II in Dur-Sharrukin and the palace of Ashur-Banapal in Nineveh.

The Assyrian reliefs, decorating the palace premises, the plots of which were scenes from royal life: religious ceremonies, hunting, military events.

One of best examples Assyrian reliefs, the “Great Lion Hunt” from the palace of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh is considered, where the scene depicting the wounded, dying and killed lions is filled with deep drama, sharp dynamics and vivid expression.

In the 7th century BC. the last ruler of Assyria, Ashur-banapap, created in Nineveh a magnificent library, containing more than 25 thousand clay cuneiform tablets. The library has become the largest in the entire Middle East. It contained documents that, to one degree or another, related to the entire Mesopotamia. Among them was kept the above-mentioned "Epic of Gilgamesh".

Mesopotamia, like Egypt, has become a real cradle human culture and civilization. Sumerian cuneiform and Babylonian astronomy and mathematics are already enough to speak of the exceptional significance of Mesopotamian culture.

The Sumerian civilization is the oldest on our planet. In the second half of the 4th millennium, it appeared, as if from nowhere. According to customs, the language of this people was alien to the Semitic tribes who settled Northern Mesopotamia a little later. The racial identity of the ancient Sumer has not been determined so far. The history of the Sumerians is mysterious and amazing. Sumerian culture gave mankind writing, the ability to process metals, the wheel and the potter's wheel. In an incomprehensible way, these people possessed knowledge that relatively recently only became known to science. They left behind so many mysteries and secrets that they rightfully occupy almost the first place among all the amazing events in our lives.

The origins of Mesopotamian culture date back to the 4th millennium BC. when cities began to emerge. The initial stages of Mesopotamian culture were marked by the invention of a kind of writing, which later turned into cuneiform. When the cuneiform was completely forgotten, the Mesopotamian culture perished along with it. However, its most important values were adopted by the Persians, Arameans, Greeks and other peoples, and as a result of a complex and not yet fully elucidated chain of transmission, they entered the treasury of modern world culture.

Writing. At first, Sumerian writing was pictographic, that is, individual objects were depicted in the form of drawings. The oldest texts inscribed in such a script date back to about 3200 BC. e. However, only the simplest facts of economic life could be marked with pictography. However, such a letter could not fix proper names or convey abstract concepts (eg thunder, flood) or human emotions (joy, sorrow, etc.). Therefore, strictly speaking, pictography was not yet a real letter, since it did not convey coherent speech, but only recorded fragmentary information or helped to remember this information.

Gradually, in the process of a long and extremely complex development, pictography turned into a verbal-syllabic script. One of the ways in which pictography moved into writing was due to the association of drawings with words.

the letter began to lose its pictorial character. Instead of a drawing to designate this or that object, they began to depict some of its characteristic detail (for example, instead of a bird, its wing), and then only schematically. Since they wrote with a reed stick on soft clay, it was inconvenient to draw on it. In addition, when writing from left to right, the drawings had to be rotated 90 degrees, as a result of which they lost all resemblance to the objects depicted and gradually took on the form of horizontal, vertical and angular wedges. So, as a result of centuries of development, pictorial writing turned into cuneiform. However, neither the Sumerians nor other peoples who borrowed their writing developed it into an alphabet, that is, a sound writing, where each sign conveys only one consonant or vowel sound. The Sumerian script contains logograms (or ideograms) that are read as whole words, signs for vowels, as well as consonants together with vowels (but not just consonants separately). In the XXIV century. BC e. the first lengthy texts known to us written in the Sumerian language appear.

The Akkadian language is attested in southern Mesopotamia from the first half of the 3rd millennium BC. e, when the speakers of this language borrowed cuneiform from the Sumerians and began to use it widely in their daily lives. From the same time, intensive processes of interpenetration of the Sumerian and Akkadian languages began, as a result of which they learned many words from each other. But the predominant source of such borrowings was the Sumerian language. In the last quarter of the III millennium BC. e. the oldest bilingual (Sumero-Akkadian) dictionaries were compiled.

At the end of the XXV century. BC e. Sumerian cuneiform began to be used in Ebla, the oldest state in Syria, where a library and archive were found, consisting of many thousands of tablets,

Sumerian writing was borrowed by many other peoples (Elamites, Hurrians, Hittites, and later Urartians), who adapted it to their languages, and gradually by the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. e. the whole of Asia Minor began to use the Sumero-Akkadian script.

Natural conditions were of particular importance for the Mesopotamian civilization. Unlike other centers of ancient culture, Mesopotamia had no stone, let alone papyrus, on which to write. But there was plenty of clay, which gave unlimited possibilities for writing, without requiring, in essence, any costs. At the same time, clay was a durable material. Clay tablets were not destroyed by fire, but, on the contrary, they acquired even greater strength. Therefore, the main material for writing in Mesopotamia was clay. In the first millennium BC. e. Babylonians and Assyrians also began to use leather and imported papyrus for writing. At the same time, in Mesopotamia, they began to use long narrow wooden boards covered with a thin layer of wax, on which cuneiform signs were applied.

Libraries. One of the greatest achievements of Babylonian and Assyrian culture was the creation of libraries. In Ur, Nippur and other cities, starting from the II millennium BC. BC, for many centuries scribes collected literary and scientific texts, and thus there were extensive private libraries.

Among all the libraries in the Ancient East, the most famous was the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (669-c. 635 BC), carefully and with great skill collected in his palace in Nineveh. For her, throughout Mesopotamia, scribes made copies of books from official and private collections, or collected the books themselves.

Archives. Ancient Mesopotamia was a land of archives. The earliest archives date back to the first quarter of the 3rd millennium BC. e. During this period, the premises in which the archives were stored, in most cases, did not differ from ordinary rooms. Later, the tablets began to be stored in boxes and baskets covered with bitumen to protect them from moisture. Labels were attached to the baskets indicating the contents of the documents and the period to which they belong.

Schools. Most of the scribes were educated at school, although scribe knowledge was often passed on in the family, from father to son. The Sumerian school, like the later Babylonian school, mainly trained scribes for state and temple administration. The school became a center of education and culture. The curriculum was so secular that religious education was not part of the curriculum at all. The main subject of study was the Sumerian language and literature. Pupils of the senior classes, depending on the narrower specialization assumed in the future, received grammatical, mathematical and astronomical knowledge. Those who were going to devote their lives to science studied law, astronomy, medicine and mathematics for a long time.

Literature. A large number of poems have been preserved lyrical works, myths, hymns, legends, epics and collections of proverbs that once made up the rich Sumerian literature. The most famous monument of Sumerian literature is the cycle of epic tales about legendary hero Gilgamesh. In its most complete form, this cycle was preserved in a later Akkadian revision found in the library of Ashurbanap-la.

Religion. Religion played a dominant role in the ideological life of ancient Mesopotamia. Even at the turn of the IV-III millennium BC. e. in Sumer a thoroughly developed theological system arose, which was later largely borrowed and developed further by the Babylonians. Each Sumerian city revered its patron god. In addition, there were gods who were revered throughout Sumer, although each of them had their own special places of worship, usually where their cult originated. They were the sky god Anu, the earth god Enlil, the Akkadians also called him Belomili Ea. The deities personified the elemental forces of nature and were often identified with cosmic bodies. Each deity was assigned specific functions. Enlil, whose center was the ancient holy city of Nippur, was the god of fate, the creator of cities, and the inventor of the hoe and plow. The god of the sun Utu (in Akkadian mythology, he bears the name Shamash), the god of the moon Nannar (in Akkadian Sin), who was considered the son of Enlil, "the fire of love and fertility Inanna (in the Vazilonian and Assyrian pantheon - Lshtar) and the god of eternity wildlife Du-muzi (Babylonian Tammuz), personifying dying and resurrecting vegetation.The god of war, disease and death Nergal was identified with the planet Mars, the supreme Babylonian god Marduk - with the planet Jupiter, Nabu (the son of Marduk), who was considered the god of wisdom, letters and accounts - with the planet Mercury.The supreme god of Assyria was the tribal god of this country Ashur.

In the beginning, Marduk was one of the most insignificant gods. But his role began to grow along with the political rise of Babylon, of which he was considered the patron.

In addition to deities, the inhabitants of Mesopotamia also revered numerous demons of goodness and sought to propitiate the demons of evil, who were considered the cause of various diseases and death. They also tried to save themselves against evil spirits with the help of spells and special amulets.

The Sumerians and Akkadians believed in an afterlife. According to their ideas, it was a realm of shadows, where the dead suffered from hunger and thirst forever and were forced to eat clay and dust. Therefore, the children of the dead were obliged to make sacrifices to them.

Scientific knowledge. The peoples of Mesopotamia achieved certain successes in the scientific knowledge of the world. Particularly great were the achievements of Babylonian mathematics, which originally arose from the practical needs of measuring fields, constructing canals and various buildings. Since ancient times, the Babylonians erected multi-story (usually seven-story) ziggurats. From the upper floors of the ziggurats, scientists from year to year conducted observations of the movements of celestial bodies. In this way, the Babylonians collected and recorded empirical observations of the Sun, the Moon, the positions of various planets and constellations. In particular, astronomers noted the position of the Moon in relation to the planets and gradually established the periodicity of the movement of celestial bodies visible to the naked eye. In the process of such centuries-old observations, Babylonian mathematical astronomy arose.

A large number of Babylonian medical texts have survived. It can be seen from them that the doctors of Ancient Mesopotamia were able to treat dislocations and fractures of the limbs well. However, the Babylonians had very weak ideas about the structure of the human body and they failed to achieve noticeable success in the treatment of internal diseases.

Even in the III millennium BC. e. the inhabitants of Mesopotamia knew the way to India, and in the 1st millennium BC. e. also in Ethiopia and Spain. The maps that have survived to this day reflect the attempts of the Babylonians to systematize and generalize their rather extensive geographical knowledge. In the middle of the II millennium BC. e. guides were compiled for Mesopotamia and adjacent countries, intended for merchants engaged in domestic and international trade. Maps covering the territory from Urartu to Egypt were found in the Ashurbanap-la library. Some maps show Babylonia and neighboring countries. These cards also contain text with the necessary comments.

Art. In the formation and subsequent development of the art of ancient Mesopotamia, the artistic traditions of the Sumerians played a decisive role. In the IV millennium BC. e., i.e., even before the emergence of the first state formations, the leading place in Sumerian art was occupied by painted ceramics with their characteristic geometric ornament. From the beginning of the III millennium BC. e. stone carving played an important role, which soon led to the rapid development of glyptics, which continued until the disappearance of cuneiform culture at the turn of the 1st century BC. n. e. Cylindrical seals depicted mythological, religious, domestic and hunting scenes.

In the XXIV-XXII centuries. BC When Mesopotamia became a single power, sculptors began to create idealized portraits of Sargon, the founder of the Akkadian dynasty.

The population of ancient Mesopotamia achieved impressive success in the construction of palace and temple buildings. They, like the houses of private individuals, were built of mud brick, but unlike the latter, they were erected on high platforms. A characteristic building of this kind was the famous palace of the kings of Mari, built at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e.

The development of technology, crafts and commodity-money relations led in the 1st millennium BC. e. to the emergence of large cities in Mesopotamia, which were the administrative, craft and cultural centers of the country, and to the improvement of living conditions. The largest city in Mesopotamia by area was Nineveh, built on the banks of the Tigris mainly under Sennacherib (705-681 BC) as the capital of Assyria.

Glass production began early in Mesopotamia: the first recipes for its manufacture date back to the 18th century. BC e.

However, the Iron Age in this country came relatively late - in the 11th century. BC e., the widespread use of iron for the production of tools and weapons began only a few centuries later.

Concluding the characterization of the culture of Ancient Mesopotamia, it should be noted that the achievements of the inhabitants of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys in architecture, art, writing and literature, in the field of scientific knowledge, in many respects played the role of a standard for the entire Near East in antiquity.

bottling wine

Sumerian pottery

First schools.
The Sumerian school arose and developed before the advent of writing, the very cuneiform, the invention and improvement of which was the most significant contribution of Sumer to the history of civilization.

The first written monuments were discovered among the ruins of the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk (biblical Erech). More than a thousand small clay tablets covered with pictographic writing were found here. These were mainly household and administrative records, but among them were several educational texts: lists of words for memorization. This indicates that at least 3000 years before and. e. Sumerian scribes were already dealing with learning. Over the following centuries, Erech's business developed slowly, but by the middle of the III millennium BC. c), in the territory of Sumer). APPEARS that there was a network of schools for the systematic teaching of reading and writing. In ancient Shuruppak-pa, the birthplace of the Sumerian ... during excavations in 1902-1903. a significant number of tablets with school texts were found.

From them we learn that the number of professional scribes at that time reached several thousand. Scribes were divided into junior and senior ones: there were royal and temple scribes, scribes with a narrow specialization in any one area, and highly qualified scribes who occupied important government positions. All this gives grounds to assume that many fairly large schools for scribes were scattered throughout Sumer and that considerable importance was attached to these schools. However, none of the tablets of that era still gives us a clear idea about the Sumerian schools, about the system and teaching methods in them. To obtain this kind of information, it is necessary to refer to the tablets of the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. e. From the archaeological layer corresponding to this era, hundreds of educational tablets were extracted with all kinds of tasks performed by the students themselves during the lessons. All stages of learning are represented here. Such clay "notebooks" allow us to draw many interesting conclusions about the system of education adopted in the Sumerian schools, and about the program that was studied there. Fortunately, the teachers themselves liked to write about school life. Many of these records also survive, albeit in fragments. These records and teaching tablets give a fairly complete picture of the Sumerian school, its tasks and goals, students and teachers, the program and teaching methods. This is the only case in the history of mankind when we can learn so much about the schools of such a distant era.

Initially, the goals of education in the Sumerian school were, so to speak, purely professional, that is, the school was supposed to train scribes necessary in the economic and administrative life of the country, mainly for palaces and temples. This task remained central throughout the existence of Sumer. As the network of schools develops. and as the curriculum expands, the schools gradually become centers of Sumerian culture and knowledge. Formally, the type of a universal "scientist" - a specialist in all sections of knowledge that existed in that era: in botany, zoology, mineralogy, geography, mathematics, grammar and linguistics, is rarely taken into account. poog^shahi knowledge of their ethics. and not the era.

Finally, unlike modern educational institutions Sumerian schools were original literary centers. Here not only studied and copied literary monuments past, but also created new works.

Most of the students who graduated from these schools, as a rule, became scribes at palaces and temples or in the households of rich and noble people, but a certain part of them devoted their lives to science and teaching.

Like university professors today, many of these ancient scholars earned their living by teaching, devoting their free time to research and writing.

The Sumerian school, which appeared initially as an appendage of the temple, eventually separated from it, and its program acquired a purely secular character in the main. Therefore, the work of the teacher was most likely paid for by the contributions of the students.

Of course, there was neither universal nor compulsory education in Sumer. Most of the students came from rich or wealthy families - after all, it was not easy for the poor to find time and money for long-term studies. Although Assyriologists had long ago come to this conclusion, it was only a hypothesis, and it was not until 1946 that the German Assyriologist Nikolaus Schneider was able to back it up with ingenious evidence based on documents from that era. On thousands of published economic and administrative tablets dating back to about 2000 BC. about five hundred names of scribes are mentioned. Many of them. To avoid mistakes, next to their name they put the name of their father and indicated his profession. Having carefully sorted all the tablets, N. Schneider established that the fathers of these scribes - and all of them, of course, were trained in schools - were rulers, "fathers of the city", envoys managing temples, military leaders, ship captains, high tax officials, priests various ranks, contractors, overseers, scribes, archivists, accountants.

In other words, the fathers of the scribes were the most prosperous townspeople. Interesting. that in none of the fragments does the name of a female scribe occur; apparently. and Sumerian schools taught only boys.

The head of the school was an ummia (knowledgeable person, teacher), who was also called the father of the school. Pupils were called "sons of the school", and the teacher's assistant was called "big brother". His duties, in particular, included the production of calligraphic sample tablets, which were then copied by the students. He also checked the written assignments and made the students recite the lessons they had learned.

Among the teachers were also a teacher of drawing and a teacher of the Sumerian language, a mentor who monitored attendance, and the so-called "know no \ flat"> (obviously, the warden who was responsible for discipline at the school). It is difficult to say which of them was considered higher in rank "We only know that the 'father of the school' was its actual headmaster. Nor do we know anything about the source of the existence of the school staff. It is probable that the 'father of the school' paid each of them his share of the total tuition fees.

As for school programs, here we have at our disposal the richest information gleaned from the school tablets themselves - a fact truly unique in the history of antiquity. Therefore, we do not need to resort to indirect evidence or to the writings of ancient authors: we have primary sources - tablets of students, ranging from scribbles of "first-graders" to the works of "graduates", so perfect that they can hardly be distinguished from the tablets written by teachers.

These works allow us to establish that the course of study followed two main programs. The first gravitated toward science and technology, the second was literary and developed creative features.

Speaking about the first program, it must be emphasized that it was by no means prompted by a thirst for knowledge, a desire to find the truth. This program gradually developed in the process of teaching, the main purpose of which was to teach Sumerian writing. Based on this main task, the Sumerian teachers created a system of education. based on the principle of linguistic classification. The lexicon of the Sumerian language was divided by them into groups, and the words and expressions were connected by a common basis. These ground words were memorized and hierarchized until the students got used to reproduce on their own. But by the III millennium BC, e. school texts began to expand noticeably and gradually turned into more or less stable teaching aids adopted in all schools in Sumer.

Some texts give long lists of names for trees and reeds; in others, the names of all kinds of nodding creatures (animals, insects and birds): in the third, the names of countries, cities and villages; fourthly, the names of stones and minerals. Such lists testify to the significant knowledge of the Sumerians in the field of "botany", "zoology", "geography" and "mineralogy" - a very curious and little-known fact. which has only recently attracted the attention of scientists dealing with the history of science.

Sumerian educators also created all kinds of mathematical tables and compiled collections of problems, accompanying each with an appropriate solution and answer.

Speaking of linguistics, it should first of all be noted that, judging by the numerous school tablets, special attention was paid to grammar. Most of these tablets are long lists of compound nouns, verb forms, etc. This suggests that Sumerian grammar was well developed. Later, in the last quarter of the III millennium BC. e., when the Semites of Akkad gradually conquered Sumer, the Sumerian teachers created the first "dictionaries" known to us. The fact is that the Semitic conquerors adopted not only the Sumerian script: they also highly valued the literature of ancient Sumer, preserved and studied its monuments and imitated them even when Sumerian became a dead language. This was the reason for the need for "dictionaries". where the translation of Sumerian words and expressions into the language of Akkad was given.

Let us now turn to the second curriculum, which had a literary bias. The training in this program consisted mainly of memorization and rewriting literary works second half of the III millennium BC. e .. when literature was especially rich, as well as in imitation of them. There were hundreds of such texts and almost all of them were poetic works ranging in size from 30 (or less) to 1000 lines. Judging by those of them. which have been compiled and deciphered. these works fell under various canons: myths and epic tales in verse, glorifying songs; Sumerian gods and heroes; hymns of praise to the gods; kings. cry; ruined, biblical cities.

Among the Literary tablets and their ilomkop. recovered from the ruins of Sumer, many are school copies copied by the hands of students.

We still know very little about the methods and techniques of teaching in the schools of Sumer. In the morning, having come to school, the students dismantled the tablet, which they wrote the day before.

Then - the elder brother, that is, the teacher's assistant, prepared a NEW tablet, which the students began to disassemble and rewrite. Older brother. and also the father of the school, apparently, barely / followed the work of the students, checking whether they copied the text correctly. no doubt that the success of the Sumerian students depended to a large extent on their memory, teachers and their assistants had to accompany too dry lists of words with detailed explanations. tables and literary texts written by students. But these lectures, which could have been of invaluable help to us in the study of Sumerian scientific and religious thought and literature, apparently were never written down, and therefore are forever lost.

One thing is certain: teaching in the schools of Sumer had nothing to do with modern system learning, in which the assimilation of knowledge largely depends on the initiative and independent work; the student himself.

As for discipline. it could not do without a stick. It is quite possible that. without refusing to encourage students for success, the Sumerian teachers nevertheless relied more on the awesome action of the stick, which instantly punished by no means heavenly. He went to school every day and just there from morning to evening. Probably, some holidays were organized during the year, but we do not have any information about this. The training lasted for years, the child managed to turn into a young man. it would be interesting to see. whether Sumerian students had the opportunity to choose a job or OTHER specialization. and if yes. to what extent and at what stage of training. However, about this, as well as about many other details. sources are silent.

One in Sippar. and the other in Ur. But besides that. that a large number of tablets were found in each of these buildings, they are almost no different from ordinary residential buildings, and therefore our guess may be erroneous. Only in the winter of 1934.35, French archaeologists discovered two rooms in the city of Mari on the Euphrates (to the northwest of Nippur), which, in their location and features, clearly represent school classes. They preserved rows of benches made of baked bricks, designed for one, two or four students.

But what did the students themselves think about the then school? To give at least an incomplete answer to this question. Let us turn to the next chapter, which contains a very interesting text about school life in Sumer, written almost four thousand years ago, but only recently compiled from numerous passages and finally translated. This text gives, in particular, a clear picture of the relationship between students and teachers and is a unique first document in the history of pedagogy.

Sumerian schools

reconstruction of the Sumerian furnace

Babylon Seals-2000-1800

Silver boat model, checkers game

Ancient Nimrud

Mirror

Life Sumer, scribes

Writing boards

Classroom at school

Plow-seeder, 1000 BC

Wine Vault

Sumerian literature

Epic of Gilgamesh

Sumerian pottery

Uruk

Ubeid culture

Copper relief depicting the Imdugud bird from the temple at El-Ubeid. Sumer

Fragments of frescoes in the palace of Zimrilim.

Marie. 18th century BC e.

Sculpture of the professional singer Ur-Nin. Marie.

Ser. III millennium BC uh

A lion-headed monster, one of the seven evil demons, born in the Mountain of the East and dwelling in pits and ruins. It causes discord and disease among people. Geniuses, both evil and good, played a large role in the life of the Babylonians. I millennium BC e.

Stone carved bowl from Ur.

III millennium BC e.

Silver rings for donkey harness. Tomb of Queen Pu-abi.

Lv. III millennium BC e.

The head of the goddess Ninlil - the wife of the moon god Nanna, the patron of Ur

Terracotta figure of a Sumerian deity. Tello (Lagash).

III millennium BC e.

Statue of Kurlil - head of the granaries of Uruk. Uruk. Early dynastic period, III millennium BC e.

Vessel with the image of animals. Susa. Con. IV millennium BC e.

Stone vessel with colored inlays. Uruk (Warka).Con. IV millennium BC e.

"White Temple" in Uruk (Warka).

Thatched dwelling house from the Ubeid period. Modern reconstruction. Ctesiphon National Park

Reconstruction of a private house (inner courtyard) Ur

Ur-royal grave

Life

Sumer carrying a lamb for sacrifice

China

India

Egypt

V. BC -Babylon rises among the Sumerian cities.

Around 3000 BC e. in the interfluve of the Tigris and Euphrates, on the territory of Sumer, the city-states of the Sumerians began to take shape.

Sumer

CHRONOGRAPH

OK. 3000 BC e. - originated in Sumer writing - cuneiform.

24th century BC e.- founder of the great Akkadian state (fell in the 22nd century BC) Sargon the Ancient united Sumer, stretching from Syria to the Persian Gulf.

1792-1750 BC e. - years of government Hammurabi, construction ziggurat Etemenanki, known as the Tower of Babel.

2nd floor 8-1st floor. 7th century BC e.- the period of the highest power of Assyria.

7th c. BC. - the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal founded the largest known library in his palace of Nineveh,

605-562 BC e. - the heyday of Babylonia under the king Nebuchadnezzar II.

70s of the 19th century- opening George Smith Epic of Gilgamesh.

Early Kingdom (c. 3000-2800 BC)- the emergence of writing - hieroglyphs; at the beginning of the third millennium BC, papyrus (a herbaceous plant) began to make writing material.

Old Kingdom (2800-2250 BC) - building pyramids.

Middle Kingdom(2050-1700 BC)

New Kingdom (c. 1580 - c. 1070)- construction of huge temple complexes.

Late period (c. 1070 - 332 BC)

ser. 3rd - 1st floor. 2nd millennium BC uh- Harappan civilization - archaeological culture of the Bronze Age in India and Pakistan.

OK. 1500 BC - the decline of the Harappan culture; settlement of the Indus Valley by the Aryans.

10th century BC. - arrangement of the Rigveda - ancient collection of the Vedas.

20s 20th century- opening Harappan civilization.

Around 2500 BC – longshan culture, one of the first dynasties.

c.1766-1027 BC- the first known samples of Chinese writing on oracle bones dating back to time Shang dynasty.

11th to 6th centuries BC e. - "Book of Songs" ("Shi tszng")- a collection of works of song and poetry of the Chinese.

The basin of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers is called Mesopotamia which means in Greek Mesopotamia or the Two Rivers. This natural area became one of the largest agricultural and cultural centers of the Ancient East. The first settlements on this territory began to appear already in the 6th millennium BC. e. In 4-3 millennia BC, the most ancient states began to form on the territory of Mesopotamia.

The revival of interest in the history of the ancient world began in Europe with the Renaissance. It took several centuries to come close to deciphering the long-forgotten Sumerian cuneiform. Texts written in the Sumerian language were read only at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and at the same time archaeological excavations of Sumerian cities began.

In 1889, an American expedition began exploring Nippur, in the 1920s, the English archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley excavated the territory of Ur, a little later, a German archaeological expedition explored Uruk, British and American scientists found the royal palace and necropolis in Kish, and, finally, in 1946, archaeologists Fuad Safar and Seton Lloyd, under the auspices of the Iraqi Antiquities Authority, began digging into Eridu. Through the efforts of archaeologists, huge temple complexes were discovered in Ur, Uruk, Nippur, Eridu and other cult centers of the Sumerian civilization. Enormous step platforms freed from sand - ziggurats, which served as the basis for the Sumerian sanctuaries, indicate that the Sumerians already in the 4th millennium BC. e. laid the foundation traditions of religious construction on the territory of Ancient Mesopotamia.

Sumer - one of ancient civilizations Middle East, which existed at the end of the 4th - beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. in the Southern Mesopotamia, the region of the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates, in the south of modern Iraq. Around 3000 BC e. on the territory of Sumer, the city-states of the Sumerians began to take shape (the main political centers were Lagash, Ur, Kish, etc.), which fought among themselves for hegemony. The conquests of Sargon the Ancient (24th century BC), the founder of the great Akkadian state, stretching from Syria to the Persian Gulf, united Sumer. The main center was the city of Akkad, whose name served as the name of the new power. The Akkadian power fell in the 22nd century. BC e. under the onslaught of the Kuti - tribes that came from the western part of the Iranian Highlands. With its fall, a period of civil strife began again on the territory of Mesopotamia. In the last third of the 22nd century BC e. Lagash flourished, one of the few city-states that retained relative independence from the Gutians. Its prosperity was associated with the reign of Gudea (d. ca. 2123 BC), a builder king who erected a grandiose temple near Lagash, concentrating the cults of Sumer around the Lagash god Ningirsu. Many monumental stelae and statues of Gudea have survived to our time, covered with inscriptions glorifying his construction activities. At the end of the 3rd millennium BC. e. the center of statehood of Sumer moved to Ur, whose kings managed to reunite all the regions of the Lower Mesopotamia. The last rise of Sumerian culture is associated with this period.

In the 19th century BC. Babylon rises among the Sumerian cities [Sumer. Kadingirra ("gate of god"), Akkad. Babilu (same meaning), Gr. Babulwn, lat. Babylon] is an ancient city in northern Mesopotamia, on the banks of the Euphrates (southwest of modern Baghdad). Founded, apparently, by the Sumerians, but was first mentioned during the time of the Akkadian king Sargon the Ancient (2350-2150 BC). It was an insignificant city until the so-called Old Babylonian dynasty of Amorite origin was established in it, the ancestor of which was Sumuabum. The representative of this dynasty, Hammurabi (reigned 1792-50 BC), turned Babylon into the largest political, cultural and economic center not only of Mesopotamia, but of the whole of Asia Minor. The Babylonian god Marduk became the head of the pantheon. In his honor, in addition to the temple, Hammurabi began to erect the ziggurat of Etemenanki, known as the Tower of Babel. In 1595 BC. e. The Hittites under the leadership of Mursili I invaded Babylon, plundering and devastating the city. At the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. e. Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I defeated the Babylonian army and captured the king.

The subsequent period in the history of Babylon was associated with the ongoing struggle with Assyria. The city was repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt. From the time of Tiglath-pileser III, Babylon was included in Assyria (732 BC).

An ancient state in the northern Mesopotamia of Assyria (on the territory of modern Iraq) in the 14th-9th centuries. BC e. repeatedly subjugated northern Mesopotamia and surrounding areas. The period of the highest power of Assyria - 2nd half. 8 - 1st floor. 7th century BC e.

In 626 BC e. Nabopolassar, the king of Babylon, destroyed the capital of Assyria, proclaimed the separation of Babylon from Assyria and founded the Neo-Babylonian dynasty. Babylon grew stronger under his son, king of Babylon Nebuchadnezzar II(605-562 BC), who fought numerous wars. During the forty years of his reign, he turned the city into the most magnificent in the Middle East and in the whole world of that time. Nebuchadnezzar brought entire nations into captivity in Babylon. The city under him developed according to a strict plan. The Ishtar Gate, the Procession Road, the fortress-palace with the Hanging Gardens were built and decorated, the fortress walls were again strengthened. From 539 BC Babylon practically ceased to exist as an independent state. It was conquered either by the Persians, or by the Greeks, or by A. Macedon, or by the Parthians. After the Arab conquest in 624, a small village remains, although Arab population and keeps the memory of the majestic city hidden under the hills.

In Europe, Babylon was known from references in the Bible, reflecting the impression it once made on the ancient Jews. In addition, there is a description of the Greek historian Herodotus, who visited Babylon during his journey, compiled between 470 and 460 BC. e., but in details the "father of history" is not entirely accurate, since he did not know the local language. Later Greek and Roman authors did not see Babylon with their own eyes, but based themselves on the same Herodotus and the stories of travelers, always embellished. Interest in Babylon flared up after the Italian Pietro della Valle brought bricks with cuneiform inscriptions from here in 1616. In 1765, the Danish scientist K. Niebuhr identified Babylon with the Arab village of Hille. The beginning of systematic excavations was laid by the German expedition of R. Koldewey (1899). She immediately discovered the ruins of Nebuchadnezzar's palace on the hill of Qasr. Before the First World War, when work was curtailed due to the advance of the British army, a German expedition unearthed a significant part of Babylon during its heyday. Numerous reconstructions are presented at the Museum of Western Asia in Berlin.

One of the biggest and most significant achievements of early civilizations was the invention of writing. . The oldest writing system in the world was hieroglyphs, which were originally pictorial in nature. In the future, hieroglyphs turned into symbolic signs. Most of the hieroglyphs were phonograms, that is, they denoted combinations of two or three consonants. Another type of hieroglyphs - ideograms - denoted individual words and concepts.

Hieroglyphic writing lost its pictorial character at the turn of the 4th–3rd millennium BC. e .. Around 3000 BC. originated in Sumer cuneiform. This term was introduced at the beginning of the 18th century by Kaempfer to refer to the letters used by the ancient inhabitants of the Tigris and Euphrates valley. Sumerian writing, which went from hieroglyphic, figurative signs-symbols to signs that began to write the simplest syllables, turned out to be an extremely progressive system, which was borrowed and used by many peoples who spoke other languages. Due to this circumstance, the cultural influence of the Sumerians in the ancient Near East was enormous and outlived their own civilization for many centuries.

The name of the cuneiform corresponds to the form of signs with a thickening at the top, but is true only for their later form; the original, preserved in the oldest inscriptions of the Sumerian and the first Babylonian kings, bears all the features of pictorial, hieroglyphic writing. Through gradual reductions and thanks to the material - clay and stone, the signs acquired a less rounded and coherent shape and finally began to consist of separate strokes thickened upwards, placed in different positions and combinations. Cuneiform is a syllabic script consisting of several hundred characters, of which 300 are the most common. Among them are more than 50 ideograms, about 100 signs for simple syllables and 130 for complex ones; there are signs for numbers, according to the sixdecimal and decimal systems.

Although Sumerian writing was invented exclusively for economic needs, the first written literary monuments appeared among the Sumerians very early. Among the records dating from the 26th c. BC e., there are already examples of genres of folk wisdom, cult texts and hymns. Found cuneiform archives brought to us about 150 monuments of Sumerian literature, among which are myths, epic tales, ritual songs, hymns in honor of kings, collections of fables, sayings, disputes, dialogues and edifications. The Sumerian tradition played a large role in the spread tales, compiled in the form of a dispute - genre typical of many literatures of the Ancient East.

One of the important achievements of the Assyrian and Babylonian cultures was the creation libraries. The largest library known to us was founded by the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (VII century BC) in his palace of Nineveh - archaeologists discovered about 25 thousand clay tablets and fragments. Among them: royal annals, chronicles of the most important historical events, collections of laws, literary monuments, scientific texts. The literature as a whole was anonymous, the names of the authors semi-legendary. Assyro-Babylonian literature is completely borrowed from Sumerian literary subjects, only the names of heroes and gods are changed.

The most ancient and significant monument of Sumerian literature is Epic of Gilgamesh(“The Tale of Gilgamesh” - “About the One Who Has Seen Everything”). The history of the discovery of the epic in the 70s of the 19th century is associated with the name George Smith, an employee of the British Museum, who, among the extensive archaeological materials sent to London from Mesopotamia, discovered cuneiform fragments of the legend of the Flood. A report on this discovery, made at the end of 1872 in the Biblical Archaeological Society, caused a sensation; In an effort to prove the authenticity of his find, Smith in 1873 went to the excavation site in Nineveh and found new fragments of cuneiform tablets. J. Smith died in 1876 at the height of work on cuneiform texts during his third trip to Mesopotamia, bequeathing in his diaries to subsequent generations of researchers to continue the study of the epic he had begun.

Epic texts consider Gilgamesh the son of the hero Lugalbanda and the goddess Ninsun. The "royal list" from Nippur - a list of the dynasties of Mesopotamia - refers the reign of Gilgamesh to the era of the I dynasty of Uruk (c. 27-26 centuries BC). The duration of the reign of Gilgamesh "Royal List" defines 126 years.

There are several versions of the epic: Sumerian (3rd millennium BC), Akkadian (late 3rd millennium BC), Babylonian. The Epic of Gilgamesh is written on 12 clay tablets. As the plot of the epic develops, the image of Gilgamesh changes. The fairy-tale hero-hero, boasting of his strength, turns into a man who knows the tragic transience of life. The mighty spirit of Gilgamesh rebels against the recognition of the inevitability of death; only at the end of his wanderings does the hero begin to understand that immortality can bring him the eternal glory of his name.

The Sumerian tales of Gilgamesh are part of an ancient tradition that is closely associated with oral tradition and has parallels with the stories of other peoples. The epic contains one of the oldest versions of the Flood, known from the biblical book of Genesis. It is also interesting to intersect with the motive Greek myth about Orpheus.

Information about musical culture are of the most general nature. Music was an important component in all three layers of the art of ancient cultures, which can be distinguished in accordance with their purpose:

Folklore (from the English Folk-lore - folk wisdom) - folk song and poetry with elements of theatrical and choreographic;
Temple art - cult, liturgical, grown out of ritual actions;
Palace - secular art; its functions are hedonistic (pleasure) and ceremonial.

Accordingly, the music sounded during religious and palace ceremonies, at folk festivals. We are unable to restore it. Only individual relief images, as well as descriptions in ancient written monuments, allow certain generalizations to be made. For example, commonly seen images harps make it possible to consider it a popular and revered musical instrument. It is known from written sources that in Sumer and Babylon they revered flute. The sound of this instrument, according to the Sumerians, was able to bring the dead back to life. Apparently, this was due to the very method of sound production - breathing, which was considered a sign of life. At the annual feasts in honor of Tammuz, the ever-resurrecting god, flutes sounded, personifying the resurrection. On one of the clay tablets was written: "In the days of Tammuz, play me the azure flute ..."

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